Daily Deals: An acclaimed mystery debut; a dystopian YA with a strong romance; and others

Some incredible Amazon only deals. I feel like an ass sharing them because of our Nook readers but I also feel like we have so many Amazon buyers that it would be a crime not to bring them to their attention. It’s a dilemma.

When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey—named Beatrice and Virgil—and the epic journey they undertake together.

With all the spirit and originality that made Life of Pi so beloved, this brilliant new novel takes the reader on a haunting odyssey. On the way Martel asks profound questions about life and art, truth and deception, responsibility and complicity.

Author of the Life of Pi. PW and Kirkus both agreed that the author was trying too hard in the book. “Martel’s aims are ambitious, but the prose is amateur and the characters thin, the coy self-referentiality grates, and the fable at the center of the novel is unbearably self-conscious. When Martel (rather energetically) tries to tug our heartstrings, we’re likely to feel more manipulated than moved.”

It is the summer of 1950–and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.

For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

Winner of the 2009 Agatha Award for Best First Novel
Winner of the 2010 Barry Award for Best First Novel
Winner of the 2010 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery

“Brilliant, irresistible and incorrigible, Flavia has a long future ahead of her…Bradley’s mystery debut is a standout. “—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

The Historian meets The Da Vinci Code and Inferno in this exhilarating supernatural thriller set in Rome, where rival groups are searching for a document that holds a secret that could shatter the Catholic Church. Sam Cabot is the pseudonym of Carlos Dews and S.J. Rozan.

This document, dear friend, will shatter the Church….

Reading these words in a letter in a dusty archive, Thomas Kelly is skeptical. The papers to which they refer have vanished, but Father Kelly, a Jesuit priest, doubts that anything could ever have had that power — until the Vatican suddenly calls him to Rome to begin a desperate search for that very document.

Meanwhile, standing before a council of her people, Livia Pietro receives instructions: She must find a Jesuit priest who has recently arrived in Rome and join his search for a document that contains a secret so shocking it has the power to destroy not only the Catholic Church, but Livia’s people as well.

As cryptic messages from the past throw Thomas and Livia into a treacherous world of art, religion, and conspiracy, they are pursued by those who would cross any line to obtain the document for themselves. Thomas and Livia must race to stop the chaos and destruction that the revelation of these secrets would create. Livia, though, has a secret of her own: She and her people are vampires.

In a sprawling tapestry that combines the religious intrigue of Dan Brown with the otherworldly terror of Stephenie Meyer, Blood of the Lamb is an unforgettable journey into an unthinkable past.

Overview
Fiona doesn’t remember going to sleep. But when she opens her eyes, she discovers her entire world has been altered-her house is abandoned and broken, and the entire neighborhood is barren and dead. Even stranger is the tattoo on her right wrist-a black oval with five marks on either side-that she doesn’t remember getting but somehow knows she must cover at any cost. And she’s right. When the honeybee population collapsed, a worldwide pandemic occurred and the government tried to bio-engineer a cure. Only the solution was deadlier than the original problem-the vaccination turned people into ferocious, deadly beasts who were branded as a warning to un-vaccinated survivors. Key people needed to rebuild society are protected from disease and beasts inside a fortress-like wall. But Fiona has awakened branded, alone-and on the wrong side of the wall . . .

Voya says “The romance between Fiona and Bowen is the most engrossing thing about the plot, played with just the right amount of innocence, tension, and heat. The rest of Stung, unfortunately, feels like a reheated version of other, better dystopian adventures.”

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Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty.
You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

Some great books today! I think I’m going to have to squeeze in some extra reading time this weekend.

BTW, I love Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce mysteries and can’t wait for the new one coming out in January so I can see how the (not entirely unexpected) bombshell at the end of the previous book is handled. Highly recommend this quirky series.

@Tanya: When you pre-order a book, you will be charged at its release whatever amount was given as the price when you ordered it. Since this book is free, you will receive it free of charge when it is officially released. This is a great deal; even if the price is raised between now and when it is released, nobody who pre-orders this book when it’s free will ever be charged for it.

It occurred to me that all you Mollie Katzen fans may be interested in another pre-order deal, Deborah Madison’s The Best of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. This is a sampler with only 22 recipes but it’s free. Madison’s full-length cookbook is being revised and reissued in the spring, and this sampler is a promo for it.

@Tanya: Nicole is correct, people who pre-order are only charged the pre-order price, and if it’s zero, then they get the book for free at the time it comes out. If by some chance you are charged (normally this doesn’t happen), call Amazon and they will correct the error and give you a refund.

Oh, thank you for the heads up on the Flavia de Luce mystery. Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie has been on my list to get around to for a couple of years now and that sale is a good reason to glom. I actually have a pattern inspired by Flavia, a shawl that is to be knit from a large, puffy skein of pale green silk entitled “Young Helpless Damsels in Damp Climes.” The shawl is about to come up on the knitting queue, so maybe I can read and knit at the same time.

Joan Wolf’s medieval mysteries (with a strong romantic element), No Dark Place and the Poisoned Serpent, are both 99 cents also on the Kindle right now (not sure about Nook). I love those books and have long wanted a 3rd one (she was dropped by that publisher and never completed a third book). Hugh is one of my favorite heroes and has a lot in common with her version of King Arthur in Road to Avalon (Road is one of my 2 favorite books of all time, the other being Lois McMaster Bujold’s A Civil Campaign).

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